Via AmSpec, a new report by the research firm Mathematica finds that, in a way, both sides in the war over abstinence education have gotten it wrong: Abstinence programs don’t leave the kids who do become sexually active more likely to have unprotected sex, but neither do they make any difference in whether and when the kids begin having sex. In fact, the only difference the programs seem to make is that they leave kids very marginally more informed about various STDs, and very marginally less informed about the efficacy of condoms.
On reflection, this ought to have come as a surprise to exactly nobody. It’s just that the debate has been framed by people who have an inflated sense of educators’ power to shape behavior. (People like, well, educators.) But think back to your own adolescence: Do you feel as though your decisions about whether or at what age to have sex or try drugs were particularly affected by whatever lectures on these topics you received in school? Did it seem like your classmates’ choices were affected? I’m betting against it.
To be honest, I don’t even remember whether our high school sex-ed classes were abstinence-focused or more comprehensive. I used condoms when I did start having sex because I was aware that sex sometimes resulted in babies or diseases, and that wrapping one’s business in a bit of latex made this less likely. I suspect I would have somehow managed to master these complex concepts even without the benefit of hours upon hours of classroom instruction. In other words, my choices—as, I’m guessing yours and those of most kids—were conditioned by the attitudes of my peers and parents, probably some mash of books I’d read and movies I’d seen, and an assessment of the risks and rewards based on the kind of information that’s just floating around in the culture. Lectures from teachers didn’t really figure in.
This seems like it ought to be so obvious that one suspects that, as with so many other culture war issues, the effect on children is (at least for many of the disputants) secondary, because children are being used as a proxy for an expressive conflict between adults. It is, mercifully, not especially socially acceptable anymore to say you want a TV show or film or song banned simply because you find it repulsive, so we talk about content that’s “harmful” to minors, and don’t fuss all that much about actually demonstrating the harms. Similarly, it’s considered a bit boorish to just announce that you find your neighbor’s views about sexuality stupid or misguided or immoral, so we have at it in the guise of a curricular dispute. That the actual content of the curriculum doesn’t seem to make much difference is neither here nor there if the dispute is an end in itself.
5 responses so far ↓
1 Reality Man // Apr 17, 2007 at 12:08 am
Where you grow up probably has some affect on this though. If you live somewhere where birth control is seen as wrong, is harder to come by and people aren’t willing to talk about sex (at least maturely), then you might be less likely to actually use condoms when you first start having sex. I’m just speculating though.
2 Anonymous // Apr 17, 2007 at 4:35 am
I’m as against abstinence programs as the next sane person, but just concerning sex-ed in general — that teens often don’t heed the information isn’t necessarily a reason to stop teaching it, and there’s a certain percentage of young people who, despite what they might say, do secretly appreciate having a respected (nonparent) adult go over sex issues in a relatively objective way, sorting out facts from myths about STDs and so on. If it were up to me, schools would ditch abstinence and seriously ramp up info-based sex ed. Way too many sexually uninformed young people out there.
3 Grant Gould // Apr 17, 2007 at 7:16 am
I think the study gets it wrong in a fairly fundamental way. The point of conventional and abstinence-based sex ed is nothing to do with whether folks have sex (nothing seems to change that much, and it’s hard to see how anyone would come to believe differently). The point is to make people feel respectively less or more guilty about it when they do inevitably have sex.
The question is — and always has been — who benefits from having more or less guilt of what sorts in the populace, guilt which later in life can be used to jump-start religious or political allegiances of one sort or another.
4 laurex // Apr 17, 2007 at 9:17 am
There is obviously a difference between awareness and behavioural change, though the two are linked. Though in my experience doing sex ed, I never felt confident great strides were being made in changing the behaviour of the youth I presented to, there was a sense of awareness increasing, especially when the information was presented several times (our workshop was “fun!”). I think what the studies you cite don’t consider is the aggregate awareness increases over time which, while perhaps harder to measure, more accurately reflect the way information filters through peers and culture.
If awareness increases, behavioural change may follow- the percentage of condom use I would wager to bet would be up since the 50s, if not since the early 90s. That said, condoms have a lot going against them. They are not easy to use without fail, they do reduce pleasure, and they are male-driven. You may have been both responsible to yourself and others but not every teenage guy can claim the same.
5 mattsteinglass // Apr 17, 2007 at 11:23 am
I was in high school at about the time the AIDS epidemic was first being publicly acknowledged (yeah, long time ago, my first crush was on a Homo Erectus chick — it didn’t work out), and, in fact, my sexual behavior WAS affected by some of the sex ed my school was providing. But we got sex ed at that school in various settings. We had a sex-positive HIV+ peer counseling group come in, raising the issues of homosexuality and bisexuality along with safe sex; then we discussed these issues again from the standpoint of sexual ethics and responsibility in an “Ethics” class. It was definitely not left to the biology teacher, or to a dedicated “sex ed” teacher. The effect was to reinforce and interact with the messages we were getting from our parents and from each other, and to influence an ongoing and open debate about sex, sexuality, ethical behavior, science, gender roles, and alla that stuff. I think it’s very mistaken to imagine that kids don’t take the advice of their teachers and parents seriously, or that they don’t make considered choices about how and when they’re going to have sex. But when teachers’ advice sets itself dead against powerful currents in society with which kids feel pressured to identify, then you have a problem.